My experience with bedding types is minimal, but here's my opinion.
Best for brooding chicks/goslings/ducklings/keets: Towels. I just don't want to have to mess with the cleanup of brooding babies (wet shavings and waterfowl hatchlings is a never-ending nightmare), and it's so much easier to be able to roll up towels, shake 'em out outside, and throw them in the wash. I don't have to worry about anyone deciding shavings look tasty, either.
Best for chickens: bare linoleum. Shavings are dusty and flies love to hide in them, and hay and straw get and stay wet, which is useless. With the linoleum I just scrape up the poop every morning: no dust, no smell, no flies. Back when I lived in an arid environment, I preferred bare earth. The poop never stayed wet for long with everything so dry, so there was never a need to even scoop the poop.
Best for muscovies: shavings. What I do with them is more like a deep litter method, I think. The coop is bare earth and I keep turning and adding shavings as things get smelly. Once a year I haul it all out of there and either dump it directly into the garden or add it to a massive compost heap. I've tried hay and straw, but had the same issues with it as I did when I used it with chickens. Duck poop is explosive and doesn't mat nicely in straw the way goose poop does.
Best for Geese: base layer of shavings topped with a layer of either hay or straw. The goose poop gets matted up and sticks in the hay/straw, making it easy to spot clean and fork up. The shavings last for ages; they absorb any moisture that escapes the top layer, but because all the solid stuff is trapped by the hay/straw the shavings stay clean and pretty much stick around until they break down. If I notice during my spot cleaning that the shavings layer is getting thin I'll add to it. Hay gives the added benefit of giving the geese something to chew on while they wait for their lazy owner to let them out for the day, though I only use it during dry months or winter months to limit mold risk. Though I'll add that the only time I had a mold crisis it came in the form of mold in the shavings I was using. I've never had mold issues in hay, for all that people recommend against using it.
Best for Guineas: straw. Guineas go hard on bedding, even when they're only cooped at night, so it doesn't take long for any bedding I add to break down and disappear. Their poop is also the driest of all my poultry, so there's less moisture needing to be sopped up. Straw is cheaper than shavings and covers more ground, so I spread it out and wait for everything in the coop to break down into dust before spreading out some more. Repeat as needed for the rest of eternity.
Rabbit coop: bare earth during warm parts of year, shavings or feathers during cold with their box stuffed to the brim with straw for them to tunnel through. The ground gets cold in winter, and the rabbits appreciate being able to sit on top of mounds of feathers and shavings. For the warmer months, though, they spend a lot of their time staying chill in the tunnels they dig, so once a week I'll go in with a snow shovel and peel off the layer of poop that accumulates on the ground of their coop, distributing it around the garden. They watch me from their tunnels as I do this, with vibes like some lagamorph version of Children of the Corn.
Best for brooding chicks/goslings/ducklings/keets: Towels. I just don't want to have to mess with the cleanup of brooding babies (wet shavings and waterfowl hatchlings is a never-ending nightmare), and it's so much easier to be able to roll up towels, shake 'em out outside, and throw them in the wash. I don't have to worry about anyone deciding shavings look tasty, either.
Best for chickens: bare linoleum. Shavings are dusty and flies love to hide in them, and hay and straw get and stay wet, which is useless. With the linoleum I just scrape up the poop every morning: no dust, no smell, no flies. Back when I lived in an arid environment, I preferred bare earth. The poop never stayed wet for long with everything so dry, so there was never a need to even scoop the poop.
Best for muscovies: shavings. What I do with them is more like a deep litter method, I think. The coop is bare earth and I keep turning and adding shavings as things get smelly. Once a year I haul it all out of there and either dump it directly into the garden or add it to a massive compost heap. I've tried hay and straw, but had the same issues with it as I did when I used it with chickens. Duck poop is explosive and doesn't mat nicely in straw the way goose poop does.
Best for Geese: base layer of shavings topped with a layer of either hay or straw. The goose poop gets matted up and sticks in the hay/straw, making it easy to spot clean and fork up. The shavings last for ages; they absorb any moisture that escapes the top layer, but because all the solid stuff is trapped by the hay/straw the shavings stay clean and pretty much stick around until they break down. If I notice during my spot cleaning that the shavings layer is getting thin I'll add to it. Hay gives the added benefit of giving the geese something to chew on while they wait for their lazy owner to let them out for the day, though I only use it during dry months or winter months to limit mold risk. Though I'll add that the only time I had a mold crisis it came in the form of mold in the shavings I was using. I've never had mold issues in hay, for all that people recommend against using it.
Best for Guineas: straw. Guineas go hard on bedding, even when they're only cooped at night, so it doesn't take long for any bedding I add to break down and disappear. Their poop is also the driest of all my poultry, so there's less moisture needing to be sopped up. Straw is cheaper than shavings and covers more ground, so I spread it out and wait for everything in the coop to break down into dust before spreading out some more. Repeat as needed for the rest of eternity.
Rabbit coop: bare earth during warm parts of year, shavings or feathers during cold with their box stuffed to the brim with straw for them to tunnel through. The ground gets cold in winter, and the rabbits appreciate being able to sit on top of mounds of feathers and shavings. For the warmer months, though, they spend a lot of their time staying chill in the tunnels they dig, so once a week I'll go in with a snow shovel and peel off the layer of poop that accumulates on the ground of their coop, distributing it around the garden. They watch me from their tunnels as I do this, with vibes like some lagamorph version of Children of the Corn.
